Zasshu no Kokoro
by Aiumi
Summary: Zelgadis' future stretches in front of him. Left alone, he is free to make his own choices; to learn more about who or what he is. Chaos ensues.
1. Chapter One

For Lina, home was where the food was

Author's Note: Although I am loath to admit this, I have never seen any of Slayers except for the movie. That included precisely zero seconds of screentime for Zelgadis. Please submit constructive criticism, and I will attempt to bring you good stuff that people like to read. 

I am rabidly anti-Zel/Ameria and I also have my own opinions on how things are spelled. Please live with it. 

And now, on with the show!

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Zasshu no Kokoro

****

-One-

'Here, if you stand in one place long enough, a lifetime's worth of adventure will find you.'

Dean Koontz- _Seize the Night_

****

For Lina, home was where the food was. For Gourry; brainless, bumbling Gourry; home was where Lina was…and consequently the food. For Ameria, home was obviously Saillune, where she could be a complete nutcase along with the king of all nutcases. Filia was just fine with the dragons. Xellos…sore wa himitsu desu. And better left that way.

But what about him?

Reflected in the mirror surface of the oasis' spring, Zelgadis Graywords frowned. _You could have gone with one of them, you know._

No. That wouldn't have worked. He knew he never wanted to get in the middle of another pointless bicker about food, never wanted to hear the word 'justice' again, never wanted to get stuck with another 'Sore wa himitsu desu!', never to get whacked with another mace.

And ever if he had gone, to what would it be? More sidelong, distrustful glances, hiding under mask and cloak, running from angry mobs…well, maybe not the last one. 

He was different, and that was it. 

He sighed, and concentrated with all his might on the surface of the water. "I wish I had the Clair Bible." Nothing. "I wish I was human again." Still nothing. "I wish I knew what the hell to do now." Hey, at least that one was realistic. 

The stockboy carefully stepped around one of the many displays of fine jewelry, lugging a big box. Not carefully enough. The corner of the box flipped a notice off of one shelf-

WARNING:

Extremely dangerous magical amulet. Do not touch. Please ask for assistance.

The pink jewel glittered innocently in its silver setting.

Ameria carefully pushed open the shop's old wooden door, eyes widening at the spotlessness of the place. Her eyes were soon entranced by something else, however. The light of the sun streaming through the huge windows caught the gold, silver and gems; covering the walls with a mosaic of light. 

"P-princess Ameria! You're b-back!" Completely infatuated with the pretty co-ruler of the city, the stockboy rushed to help in whatever way he could. 

"It's okay, I'm just looking." Ameria graced him with a smile, and went about her business. 

Amethysts and aquamarines reminded her too much of Zel, tearing her emotions even at the sight. They didn't match the dress, anyway. 

She blocked the chimera from her thoughts, choosing to visualize the dress she was going to wear to her welcoming party her father was holding the next day. King Phil had invited nearly everyone in the city to welcome back their beloved princess of justice from her adventures. The dress she had chosen was a vision of white satin and pink mesh, her favorite colors. 

__

Ameria. The gem glittered. _Over here, Ameria._

She turned her head, not quite sure what was calling her. 

__

I'm perfect, Ameria. Don't you think so?

It was perfect. The gem had to be an extremely rare pink diamond fit for…a princess! But it looked expensive. Too expensive.

__

You have enough. Ameria, I can give you everything you've ever wanted. I can give you Zelgadis. Anything, Ameria.

Beautiful. She had to have it. She tentatively reached toward the glittering pink heart. 

__

Yes. Ameria, I can make you happy. Don't you want that? 

She did. More than anything. Quickly, furtively, as if she wasn't allowed to, she snatched the pendant, watching it sparkle against her hand. 

An overwhelming rush of adrenaline nearly knocked her off her feet. Somehow, she felt she wasn't allowed to have this…and yet she had it anyway! No one could tell her what to do!

__

Buy me, Ameria. Stealing isn't right, especially for a princess. 

It couldn't be bad, it was giving her good, just advice! She was suddenly seized with an irresistible temptation to wear it, _itched_ to feel its cool metallic weight around her neck. "Excuse me?"

"Yes, princess?"

"I'll take this!"

"Wait, don't you want to know how much…"

"Just charge it to my father's account! Later!" Ameria ran for the door.

Zel tried desperately to steady himself, anxiety twisting in his chest at the unwelcome sight of the Saillune palace. He did not want to be here. He clutched Ameria's amulet, desperately wishing he could grind it to powder in his fist. _Screw this. I should have thrown it off the boat._

You know what to do, Ameria. It's turning out exactly as I planned.

She smiled. He'd come back. It was enough. 

Zelgadis glanced around, twitchy, and slipped through the door. Several bewildered serving girls stared back at him. "Uh…is Princess Ameria around? No? Too bad. Give this to her when you see her, would you? Thanksbye!" 

Not caring about how idiotic he sounded and just wanting to get the hell out of there, Zel tossed the amulet to one of the girls and spun around. 

"Zelgadis?" 

__

Damn. 

"ZEL! It _is_ you!" Ameria dashed toward him. At the last second, she feigned tripping and fell right into his arms. 

She giggled nervously. "Sorry, Zel." 

"Uh…It's okay, Ameria. I should really be…leaving…um…yeah," he stammered. 

"Oh, you _have_ to stay for dinner at least, Zel! Daddy's throwing a Welcome Home party and everyone in town's coming; it'll be _so _much fun! Please?" 

"Okay…"

"This is great! I _knew_ you'd come back!" She dragged him toward the great hall. "C'mon, they're going to start soon!" 

Of course, Ameria _insisted_ that he sit next to her at Prince Phil's table, attracting interested stares from everyone in attendance. Zelgadis studied his reflection in the polished inner surface of his wine goblet and did his best to disappear. He could just hear what was going through everyone's heads: _Doesn't the princess look lovely? I wonder who her… interesting… friend is._

"Zel? I'll be right back. I forgot my…um…purse!" A nervous titter escaped her lips. Zel frowned. She patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. "Don't worry, silly! I wouldn't run away on you!" she chirped. With a rustle of skirts, she disappeared into the crowd.

Ameria trotted purposefully out of the hall, her eyes cold and narrow. "Guards!" she snapped, glancing about expectantly. The heel of her left shoe suddenly snapped, and a very nasty and particularly unprincesslike word escaped her lips as she narrowly avoided falling. 

A few slightly inebriated guards straggled to attention, sniggering loudly. "Yes, princess?"

"You. Yes, you. The one laughing. You think this is funny? Get me a new pair of shoes. The rest of you, lock every exit to this castle, and put a double watch on every door. No one gets out of here until I say so."

"Yes, prin-"

"NOW! Or I'll have the lot of you executed!" 

By the time Ameria got back, albeit flushed and decidedly purse-less, King Phil had launched into a series of long-winded toasts, all of which were well-received by the crowd. 

"To my wonderful, brave, beautiful daughter, your princess, Ameria!"

The crowd cheered.

"To the era of peace and justice being held up in our kingdom!"

The crowd cheered. 

"To the ludicrous tax hike I will put in place tomorrow afternoon!"

The crowd cheered. Hey, they were all drunk. 

"Just kidding!"

The less drunken faction of the crowd cheered. 

"And now, if I may have your attention, please…Princess Ameria has an announcement to make."

Ameria smiled sweetly. "Thank you, daddy. Everyone! I have seen and learned many things on my travels." The crowd cheered. "Yes, thank you. And if I have learned one thing, it is that people need someone to look up to." The crowd cheered, involuntarily looking up at Ameria. "And that is why I have decided to announce my engagement to the heir to our kingdom tonight!" The crowed cheered, but many young men in the crowd looked devastated. 

__

Huh. I wonder who the poor bastard could be. Hope he knows what he's getting into. 

"The marriage will take place in just a few days time! And I wouldn't want to keep you waiting an unjust length of time, so I might as well just tell you who the lucky guy is." 

Ameria grinned. "Zelgadis Greywords!"

Zel gibbered. "Wh…heh…er…you…" His expression was akin to that of a man, who, upon coming home from work, discovers that squirrels have kidnapped his wife and are having a toga party in the bathroom. It didn't help that several guards attempted to haul him to his feet at that same moment. 

Ameria chuckled. Her necklace twinkled. She then attempted to hug the living daylights out of Zel, who turned a deeper shade of blue. 

Zel staggered backward, gasping for breath and managing a pretty good fish imitation. A guard caught him. 

"You…you…"Fear replaced disbelief, which was in turn overridden by fury. "What…you…!" Somewhere in between fury and fear, the ability to stand under one's own power was achieved. "What the hell…" He was still speaking incoherently, but hey, we can't all be perfect. 

Still moving backwards, his eyes trained steadily on Ameria, Zel somehow managed to not trip over anything and still maneuver his way to the door. He had come to the conclusion that he was having a bad dream and that consciousness would be regained if he exited the castle. 

A particularly plastered young man failed to get out of his way, and the chimera was knocked neatly off his feet. It hurt like hell. He failed to wake up. 

Zel came up with the better conclusion that the world had gone insane, and Ameria especially.

He struggled to his feet, dimly realizing that Ameria was screaming some order at him. A sparkle near her throat alerted him to the presence of the strange necklace. _Oh, shit._ She had a Lairise Amulet. Wonderful. He seriously suspected it wasn't under the control of any third party. Even better. Which meant she would stop at nothing until she got exactly what she wanted- him. 

All the swear words he'd ever learned mashed into one offensive phrase didn't seem like enough here. Best just to leave while he could. People were beginning to titter and murmur to each other. 

His fingers groped over the carved mahogany doors until they reached the cool metal of the doorknob. He grabbed at it madly, and attempted to twist it open. It halted stubbornly and clicked. He pushed, pulled, turned, poked, jiggled, teased, and finally flat-out hit the damn thing, and wound up with nothing to show for it but a sore hand. Locked. 

At this point, the chimera was, among other things, tired, hungry, and hadn't had a hot shower in a good long time. In short, he was just flipping pissed off. With an enraged squall, the lock was melted and the door half-incinerated due to a well-placed fireball. 

"Seize him!" Ameria barked. The guards complied. 

Zel scuttled along the marble passageway to the main entrance, barred a blocked by no less than six palace grunts. _Well, they don't look like the brightest bunnies in the box._

"Hey, you guys mind if I use this window? No? Okay." He quickly jimmied open the large picture window, which swung out on rusty hinges. It was a full twenty feet to the ground. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea…

"ZELGADIS GREYWORDS, YOU GET BACK HERE!!!"

He jumped.

****

TO BE CONTINUED


	2. Chapter Two

-TWO- ****

-TWO-

"It's all in how you look at things…For instance, if Christmas trees were people and people were Christmas trees, we'd all be chopped down, put up in the living room, and covered with tinsel while the trees opened our presents."

Norton Juster, _The Phantom Tollbooth_

Ameria Wil Tesla Saillune was not happy.

"You _imbeciles_! You brainless sons of slugs! How could you possibly let him escape out the window? I'll have you hung by your ankles and beaten with pointed sticks! And bitten! By big dogs! With even bigger teeth! And when the dogs get bored, I'll throw you down the grand staircase until…until you're nothing but tiny, insignificant bits! And then I will have the head chef make a casserole of the you-bits and eat it for dinner!"

She stormed upstairs to her suite of rooms, and glowered on the pink-and-gold chaise lounge for the next two hours. 

Jarek Trall-Delmar-Damagan was not happy.

He had failed to wake up next to an insanely beautiful woman for the first time that week, first of all. Not that there hadn't been one to wake up next to last night. He felt rejected for approximately three seconds until his ego comforted him into thinking that he was too good for the slut. 

He rang rather rudely and incessantly for his highest paid butler, and ordered the mail to be brought in. The butler courteously pointed out that the mail was sitting on his bedside table. Within minutes, the butler was escorted out of the house by the large security staff.

Zelgadis Graywords was insanely happy. He landed wrong on his left ankle, which sent snarled pain impulses through his nerves at every step. His cloak snagged on a rosebush, leaving ugly rents in the fabric. He had always liked that cloak. Oh, well. The rosebushes repeated this favor tenfold on his face and hands, golem or not. The grin on his face would have sent small woodland creatures fleeing in terror.

He skipped happily down a slope, tripped, and rolled fifty feet over mud and gravel into a well-placed pond. He sat up, brushed the pond weed away from his face, and whistled a cheery tune as he waded his way out of the lagoon, which just happened to be stocked with Slagarian Biting Fish. 

As he wandered down a dusty road, bruised, bleeding, drenched, and covered in pond weed, he decided that he felt like singing. Unfortunately, he couldn't remember the words to any happy songs. It didn't really matter, because at that moment it almost simultaneously began to rain and a runaway horse nearly trampled him. 

Zel immediately left the road and stumbled through a forest composed almost entirely of pricker bushes until he came upon two large caves, both of which looked like a rather dry, comfortable place to spend the night. 

A clan of large, bad-tempered bunny rabbits, he discovered the hard way, inhabited the first cave. 

The second was empty except for the excess of rubbish and pointy-looking gravel on the floor. He did his best to clear a space, sat down, built a fire, and cooked up a plump Slagarian Biting Fish that had trapped itself in his hood. 

Now, as every seasoned wood-dweller knows, one should never eat the Slagarian Biting Fish. Their flesh is not only mushy, bland, devoid of nutritional value, and generally icky, but also mildly toxic. Unwitting consumers of Slagarian Biting Fish often report symptoms of eight-drink-hangover headaches, stomach cramps, and strange dreams. 

When an amateur wood-dweller asks advice of a seasoned wood-dweller, the advice will often come in the cryptic form of this phrase: 'Don't eat the Slagarian Biting Fish.' After which the amateur wood-dweller will go out into the woods and come crawling back a day or two later, moaning, groaning and muttering, "I finally figured out what that meant…" The amateur wood-dweller will then be considered a seasoned wood-dweller and the circle of life will continue. 

Ignoring the grinding pain in his stomach, Zel did a happy little dance out of pure joy before keeling over and falling asleep. 

He had a very strange dream. 

Zel sat straight up, quaking in fear. His first thought was that there was something else in the cave with him. But no, that was silly. The noise was his own heart beating, his own panting, his own ungodly snarling and roaring.

Yes, there was something else in the cave. 

Being an un-cowardly little sorcerer, Zel drew his sword and crept cautiously into the pitch-black bowels of the cave. As cautiously and silently as one can creep when there is the crunchy type of gravel underfoot, that is. 

The farther he went, the less the pitch-blackness persisted. The cavern was becoming suffused with a metaphysical blue glow that seemed to shift in a predetermined pattern. There was a sound, almost a taste to the light, if such a thing could be imagined, like looking at sunlight underwater.

Zel tiptoed his way through the rapidly narrowing passage, eager to find the source of the glow, which he found very comfortable to behold. 

A serpent's tail, thick as a young tree trunk, flailed across the opening at the tunnel's end. Zel screamed. He was drowned out by another bout of roaring and groaning. 

Teeth as long as the palm of his hand glistened in the creature's mouth, which could only be classified as a lion's mouth, because the creature's head was also that of a lion, its bright mane streaming down to the creature's chest. From there on, gold fur became rather wiry, dull gray curly goat's hair. This could also be classified as normal, because it was, in fact, the body of a goat. And the tail was a serpent's, thick and muscular, glistening green and brown, fully long as the creature itself. 

A yawning wound festered in the creature's chest, above the heart and directly where lion's mane boiled in thick gold into goat. Black-red blood oozed freely from it, crusting a sickly dried copper on the once beautiful fur. Zel's stomach flipped over when he saw that the creature was, in effect, lying in it's own blood. 

It was amazing. It was terrible. And it certainly had a reason to be roaring in agony. 

Zel contemplated whether or not to just put it out of its misery, as it seemed to have gone into a stupor, great head resting on its cloven forefeet in semblance of sleep. 

A sound no one else could hear made its eyes flutter open, and it sat up and turned those eyes to Zelgadis. 

Human, female eyes, a deeper brown than he'd ever seen. His mind swirled with images of coffee, pottery, chocolate, nothing comparing to this. Something stirred within his soul, and he knew the beast was human, and that it knew him and accepted him. He knew its eyes would plague his dreams until the day he died if the creature also ceased to be. 

Involuntarily, his brain formed a sentence. "Who are you?" he whispered. 

Organ music blared discordantly into his ears. A wedding march. 

Ameria Wil Tesla Saillune, crown princess, floated down the aisle of the chapel, purple hair a jabbing contrast to the foamy puffs of white lace boiling around her as an excuse for a dress. 

Zel tried to scream and found that he was rooted to the spot, unable to speak or even run for his life. As he struggled to open his mouth, Ameria stopped next to him on the altar.

__

No. No, no, no, this can't be happening, it can't, I won't let it…

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…"

"Skip it, Reverend! Make this snappy, I haven't got all day!"

"Ahem. Do you, Ameria Wil Tesla Saillune, take this…" 

__

No, no, not a chance, no way, absolutely not…

"…Slagarian Biting Fish to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"I sure do!" Ameria hugged the immense Slagarian Biting Fish standing on her other side. It looked rather pale, but, then again, Slagarian Biting Fish usually do. 

Zel opened his eyes and sighed. _My, what a strange dream…_

He stood at the mouth of the cave, looking out onto the world, taking deep breaths of exhilaratingly frigid air. The sun was just beginning to rise, splashing the forest with its first color. The rabbits were hopping about for joy in the dew. There was a nice path through the pricker bushes he hadn't noticed last night. 

He had a feeling it was going to be a pretty damn good day for striking out on one's own. 

He also wanted coffee. 

TO BE CONTINUED


	3. Chapter Three

Untitled

**-THREE-**

"…the difference between seeing and not seeing can be the difference between living and dying."   
Stephen King, _The Drawing of the Three_

Zel awoke a day later, a stolen loaf of bread richer, with another sky full of small sheepy clouds over his head. The sun-warmed slate of the roof he had slept on supported him, and life seemed devilishly simple and impossibly enjoyable. As the city of Gerrin stirred to life around him, he yawned, covered himself more comfortably with his cloak, and feel asleep once more. 

"Ameria, dear?" King Phil poked his head around the door cautiously. "Are you all right, my dear? You haven't been acting quite like yourself lately." He did not venture farther into the room. 

"Oh, no, father. I'm quite all right. I simply picked up a bit of food poisoning at the last ball." 

Ameria jumped to her feet, smiling brightly. "Once more, the powers of truth, love, and justice prevail over the common germ!" She flashed a victory sign. 

"That's my girl." Phil smiled and made his exit. 

Zel regained consciousness with another yawn that practically unhinged his jaw. A muttered mantra about how lovely coffee would be at this hour kept up a nice background noise as he staggered to his feet, tied his cloak around his shoulders, and proceeded to walk straight off the edge of the roof in a drowse. 

As soon as his brain registered that he had taken a three-story fall, he began to twitch in pain. Several townspeople gathered around the poor man who was currently a large beige lump. The crowd proceeded to become quite large, the decidedly normal people of Gerrin loving a spectacle as much as normal people do. Several, mistaking Zel for some sort of abstract artist trying to make a statement, threw coins. Finally, everyone straggled off, the townspeople not enjoying a spectacle that just lay there and twitched as much as they enjoyed their own silly little lives. 

Zel stood up, quite unhurt. Gathering the coins from the ground as if he did this every day of his life, he traipsed off toward the nearest café. 

Jarek Trall Delmar-Damagan, Jay to his nonexistent friends, Jay-Jay to his late mother, Master Jarek to his best servants, Master to the not-so-best servants, Boss to his henchmen, and That Rich Guy to the rest of Gerrin, decided to do something unnecessarily mean and rotten. 

He just couldn't decide what. 

"Simms!" Simms did not come. Jarek had fired Simms that morning. 

"Venio!" Venio came. Venio was his cat. 

"Hello there, Venio." Jarek patted the bored-looking white cat. "Would you be a good boy and go find my highest paid butler?" The cat looked more bored than usual in his general direction. "Thank you ever so much." 

The cat loped off in a bored sort of way. 

While he waited, Jarek admired himself in the mirror, practicing his evil grin. He was very good at it. 

In fact, Jarek had every making of an extremely vile, despicable egomaniac. His hair was the black-green of a beetle's carapace, tied back in a ponytail with a simple leather thong. An arrogant look was continually plastered across his face, which consisted of amber-brown eyes aquiline features and that were just a little too sharp. He would have been verging on the edge of pretty without the evil look, but, with it, he managed to pass as rather handsome in a twisted sort of way. Jarek did not get out of the house much, making him fashionably pale and thin, and fairly tall as well. 

It was been said that he had been a very cute child, but no one really believed it. 

His hobbies were collecting antique weapons, using the antique weapons on his enemies, refusing to donate to charities, and tennis. 

His gleeful spending of the fortune his late parents had left him did not fluctuate overly much, as he was always firing his highest-paid servants and neglecting to re-hire them. His henchmen had day jobs as bandits, so he didn't have to pay them terribly much. Most of his budgets were devoted to 'Business Expenses': overpriced liquor, imported food, tailored clothing, and demanding prostitutes. 

The prostitutes were not actually prostitutes; all or most of them were just exotic dancers that were too refined to work in squalid conditions and were looking to make some cash working for the rich old duffers. Jarek was not a rich old duffer, but he paid better than one. Therefore, Jarek got business. Lots of it. 

Venio returned with a middle-aged, postured man that Jarek recognized to be named Higley. "Higley, where is my list of things I resent and have vowed to do something about?" 

Higley prided himself on being much more intelligent than Simms. He fetched the list from the dressing table right in front of Jarek and therefore guaranteed himself an exorbitant salary for another day. 

"Thank you, Higley. That will be all." Higley bowed himself out, smiling slightly. 

Jarek consulted his list. It consisted of eighteen items, neatly written, explained, and cross-indexed. Several were crossed out, completed, so only thirteen really remained. He read through each, trying to find one that was really annoying and yet easy to take care of. 

He found one. 

6. Aisling Vanselse   
-Her existence   
-Her refusal to accept any bribe for, admit the existence of, or stay on the subject of her father's enchanted sword.   
-That sickening naïveté act she puts on   
-The constant devotion to her deceased parents 

Not listed or consciously recognized was his dislike of her for the simple reason that she was, indeed, a very different sort of person from him, or that she would not, under any conditions, ever sleep with him. Those were much too embarrassing to be written down. 

Zel's wandering through the streets led him to a small but thriving little restaurant called The Multiplicative Inverse. It offered promise of intelligent people drinking coffee and leaving well enough alone. 

Zel stepped in with a casual attitude he liked to think of as wandering with a purpose. A pretty waitress with straight, long, dark purply-blue hair and slim figure accosted him at the door. "Excuse me, sir. We don't allow capes in the restaurant. You'll have to check yours at the counter." 

Zel attempted to wander past her with a purpose, liking his cape where it was. 

The waitress grabbed his collar and slammed him against the door, his head making a dull crack against the wood. "I said no capes allowed, punk. You can stay inside, capeless, or I can throw you back out the door." Her tone suggested that she wasn't going to open the door first. 

"Ok, ok, I'm sorry!" Zel whimpered. He quickly untied his cape and handed it to her. He mourned the loss of his mask, which was attached to the cape. She busied herself with hanging it up, and he proceeded to a comfy seat near the window. 

"May I help you?" The cloakroom girl was back, a professional smile on her face. Her nametag declared that her name was Luna. 

"So, you're the waitress as well as the bouncer? Impressive." Zel did not smile. 

"The head chef and the owner, too. So whaddaya want?" 

"Just coffee. Black." Zel sighed, and paid her. 

He looked around as he waited for his morning caffeine. Signs declared that anyone using magic would be dealt with most harshly, and that the management would not hesitate to Fireball stubborn customers. A painting of his jack-of-all-trades waitress hung on one wall, a small placard underneath it. 

Luna brought his coffee. "Here you go, beige guy. Enjoy." She reclaimed her spot behind the cloak check. 

Zel was quite indignant for a moment, mentally defending his right to wear a lot of beige. Then he tasted the coffee. "Holy Cepheid, that's bad…" He swallowed with much effort. 

"What…did…you…say?!" Luna was back. _"No one insults my coffee!"_ she roared._ "Flare…ARROW!"_

Zel ducked the bolt of flame that incinerated a chair behind him. "I just…can I get this to go?" 

"Oh. Ok." 

He quickly made his exit, glancing at the placard beneath the painting. 

_Our Founder:   
Luna Inverse-   
The Greatest Sorceress in All the Land_

Yes, just as he suspected. 

He began to wander without a purpose, alternately sipping carefully at his coffee, which failed to taste better as it cooled, and making interesting faces as he swallowed. 

Zel decided that he needed a purpose. He could not sleep on rooftops forever, as fun as it was, and he didn't exactly feel like leaving the city. 

Perhaps he could become a wandering bard. All he would need would be a good guitar. He checked his money pouch. The results were not cheerful. 

Zel trudged unhappily past the section of the city which dealt in music and song, checking the gutters for stray coins and making plans to fall of a roof again. Near the area where music and song petered out into drug dealers and thugs, a grubby sign announced: 

**Ray's Music and Stuff-   
Cheap.**

Zel perked up and darted down the dingy alley. 

A fat man sat behind the cluttered counter, dozing off. Zel poked him. "Are you Ray?" 

"Yeah…watchawant, anyway…" The man began to doze off again. 

"I need a guitar." Zel poked Ray again. 

"Okay, just a sec…" He walked off into the dark shop and came back with a rather nice acoustic, a bit scuffed around the edges, but otherwise okay. "Thirty silver pieces." He plopped it on the counter. 

"Eh…" Zel poked around in his pouch. "Uh, why don't you just take all of this. It's about the same." He tossed the bag across the counter, grabbed the guitar, and bolted. 

Ray went back to sleep. 

Zel inspected his purchase with more suspicion than a man who has probably just cheated a merchant out of quite a lot of money has a right to do. 

There was a small label pasted on the back: 

Edern Vanselse   
Number Six, Delsir Row   
Gerrin 

Delsir Row, Zel discovered, was part of a long series of two-story residences in an upper-middle-class residential area gone slightly to seed. The open-air market was separated from the buildings by a row of shops, creating an enclosed alleyway to access the houses, which were rather like adobe boxes stood on end with a window or two inserted. Number Six was located at the dead-end of the alley. 

Rather than interfere with fate unduly, Zel climbed up on the roof of the shop across from the residence and decided to let nature do its thing. So, he watched the roof directly parallel to him and the alley below, waiting for whatever was destined to happen. 

Destiny likes to take its time. 

Zel sat down and thought of a rather happy song to play. The guitar felt very comfortable in his hands, almost as if it had been made for him instead of Eldern Vanselse. 

"Kako tsukete…itsumo…iki gatte ta…saki o isogu…faitaa" He chuckled. _Fate is in a hurry?_

"Doko…ma demo doko…ma demo tsuzuku jinsei o…" Where, oh where, but life continues… 

Aisling stood in the living room, listening to the music outside. _It sounds like Da…_

Quietly, she swung the heavy black cloak about her shoulders and pulled the hood over her face. She pushed away the feeling of shame that came with having to hide every time she left the house. 

_And what did you do today, little one? _

Nothing much, Da, just snuck out for some groceries. 

She snorted in disgust and left, still hearing the man's voice and the sound of the guitar follow her down the alley and into the market. 

Zel, caught up in remembering the lyrics, missed her. 

He also missed several people that came down the alley fifteen minutes later and hid in the shadows. 

**TO BE CONTINUED**


End file.
